(MITCHELL) - After four days of hunting, 57 deer were killed in an effort to control the white-tail population damaging vegetation at Spring Mill State Park and its neighboring Cave River Valley Nature Preserve.

Controlled deer hunts were conducted at the two state-run properties November 13th and 14th and again November 26 and 27th.

In those first two days of hunting, 48 deer were culled between the two properties, with 28 taken out of Spring Mill and another 20 killed at Cave River Valley. In the final two days of the hunt, eight deer were killed at Spring Mill with only one shot at Cave River Valley.

The deer reduction efforts are conducted at both Spring Mill and Cave River Valley Nature Preserve near Campbellsburg. Cave River, which consists of about 300 acres of land, also is managed by Spring Mill.

The goal of the hunts is to thin deer herds to protect plants and other animals from the problems caused by having too many deer in a specific area.

Property manager Mark Young says one reason the numbers were up was because of the good weather.

"During the two years before this, we had bad weather during the designated hunting days, with one year that had bad weather on all four days of the hunt," Young said.

Young says it is difficult to get an actual number of deer at the two locations because they travel. But he added, hunters who have hunted the areas before, claim there were fewer deer this year.

The park won't know until a spring vegetation survey takes place if the reduction efforts worked and won't know until summer if the state will allow it to have more herd reduction hunts in 2013.